Alaska
Tourism

Tourism was a well-known feature
of life along the Alaskan coast in the late 19th century. In
1883, one visitor wrote that "a round trip ticket means more
unalloyed enjoyment than can be crowded into a similar
two-week trip in this country or any other." Steamships
frequented the harbors on the southeastern coast, and during
the summer months, wealthy tourists traipsed through Juneau
in search of souvenirs. In the 1890s, a wooden walkway had
been built across the moraine at Muir Glacier in Glacier
Bay, making the hike easier for the several hundred visitors
that came each year. At Sitka and Wrangell, the arrival of a
steamship turned the town into a temporary but festive
market place. Natives quickly produced goods to entice
tourists to buy: small carvings, jewelry and baskets were
the most popular items.

Tourist Maps and Guide
Books

By 1885, the steamship companies
were printing up the first of the Alaskan guidebooks. Some
Alaskan towns went so far as to print up their own tourist
leaflets, complete with walking maps and hotel
advertisements -- precursors to the glossy, full-color
tourist brochures available today.

A case in point is The North
Star Tourist's Special Edition, printed in Sitka in the
summer of 1897. The four-page illustrated newspaper opens
with an invitation to the visitor:

Knowing, as we well do,
that a few suggestions as to what to see and how to see
it, are a great boon to a traveler, landing in a strange
place, we suggest the following points of interest, and
append a schedule as to the easiest way to see
them.

The interior
of the Russian church, a popular tourist stop in
Sitka, Alaska, photographed by Edward Curtis in
1899.Click
image for a larger view

The Special Edition
encouraged sightseers to visit the Russian Cemetery, the
Cathedral of St. Michael, and the Indian River Trail. One
hundred years later these same sites are featured in the
Sitka Convention and Visitors Bureau Guide.

A tourist
brochure published in Sitka in 1999.Click
image for a larger view.

A close reading of the two
guides uncovers some striking differences. For example, the
1897 guide suggests that tourists take in the "public school
for white children," an indication that schools were
segregated even before the Nelson Act of 1905 made it law
that whites and Alaska Natives attend separate schools. A
second notable difference was the US Marine Barracks, which,
in 1897, was occupied by forty marines charged with keeping
the peace in a territory still controlled by the US Navy.

What's the Weather Forecast for
the Tourist?

The modern guide to Sitka tells
us that in July the average temperature is a pleasant sixty
degrees Fahrenheit. Neither publication mentions the rain,
and no wonder. Sitka was, and is, one of the rainier spots
in North America. As Henry Gannett of the Harriman
Expedition noted, "the annual rainfall is heavy over this
entire coast. At Sitka it is more than double that of the
Atlantic coast, one hundred and five inches a year being the
record.... A description of climate would be incomplete if
it did not include the amount of sunshine and cloudiness,
since these are important factors in the growth of plant
life. At Sitka, it is cloudy two thirds of the
time."

Clouds and rain might keep
tourists away, but they did not seem to daunt the spirits of
Sitka's year-round residents. In his diary, Frederick
Dellenbaugh wrote "Sitka people pay no attention to rain.
The Indian band came out on the pier and rendered a number
of airs as parting salute, the final ones being 'Yankee
Doodle' and 'Three Cheers for the Red, White and Blue' as
the ship sailed away."

Camping

Members
of Harriman Expedition on a camping excursion, July 1899.
Note the mosquito nets.

Click image for a
larger view

"A curious feature is a
number of sections of boardwalk laid over the top
of the moraine near Muir Glacier, probably by some
steamboat company that brought tourists in last
year or the year before. ... Muir's cabin is a
little one, but it has a good roof and it is well
built. It has been used by many people since Muir
left it."

Frederick Dellenbaugh, commenting on the tourists
visiting John Muir's cabin in Glacier Bay, in a
diary entry dated June 11, 1899.

"The tourist only gets
a glimpse of Alaska."

Edward Curtis, in a letter dated October 10,
1950.

A tourist newspaper published in
Sitka in 1897.Click image for a
larger view

"The Alaska coast is to
become the show-place of the earth, and pilgrims,
not only from the United States, but from far
beyond the seas will throng in endless procession
to see it. Its grandeur is more valuable than the
gold or the fish or the timber, for it will never
be exhausted."

Henry Gannett, predicting the boom in the tourist
industry for Alaska in his essay for The
Harriman Alaska Expedition, Volume II.